Page 15
I hurried onward, cleansing more and more vampires, revenge a fire crackling beneath me.
“There is not much time left until your power must recharge,” Selene warned.
At a guess, I would say I’d been drinking the rot for twenty minutes. “How much longer?”
“Ten more minutes.”
I sped through the palace corridors, finding more dead bodies, more vampires to cleanse, and the corpses of those executioners I’d locked away in the endless maze of these corridors.
Guilt stabbed at me because of the elf. Because he’d begged me to spare them, not let them starve to death with no way out. All while I tried to show my people I was strong enough to be their king.
Worthy like my brother Lucius.
A figure crashed through a broken door up ahead—a door leading to the dungeons below.
The alpha werewolf crouched, fixing me with his golden stare.
Declan. The executioner wolf Paris had encountered at the Lost Valley in the Werewolf Domain. A man who’d helped him before Aidan’s golden rot infected his mind, landing him in my dungeons.
“Don’t kill him,” I remembered Paris pleading.
Declan growled. Naked, his teeth bared, white fur rippling across his light-brown skin. About to shift into his wolf form. His executioner side registered on my senses. I could unpick the deceit the potion inside all executioners took to hide themselves, revealing the murderous truth beneath.
“Aidan will destroy you,” he threatened. “He is glorious.”
Yes, yes. Tell me something new.
With scant time remaining, I kept Paris’s plea close to me, launching myself at the alpha. He moved quickly, his executioner speed matching mine. He twisted and grabbed for me as I twirled and dodged and snatched at him in return.
For two minutes, we both managed to avoid each other, inches away from contact, both outmatching the other.
Until he caught me by the arm, pulling me forward so our faces collided.
Curse it!
“Time to die!” Fur spread across his face, his jaw elongating.
Killing me wasn’t easy, since the Heart of All was buried under layers of protection. It would take a lot to expose it, a complete unraveling of everything that was me. Even when exposed to the eye of an executioner, it wasn’t breakable.
Paris had tried, getting nowhere with his stakeblade and mysterious crystal blade.
I slammed my forehead into the bridge of Declan’s nose. The bone broke, blood spraying as he staggered backward into the wall. His fur sank back into his skin, his jaw fixing back into place.
He smelled of Paris’s honeyed scent.
Had he touched him while caring for him in those caves? Before Aidan got to him?
“Fucking vile king!” Declan barked. “Thinks he can fuck one of mine!”
Mine…
I slammed him to the ground, straddling him.
Paris is mine…
“Aidan will burn your kind from this world!” he roared.
Why do you smell of him? Did you touch him? Do you want him?
